1 Corinthians 9:19-27
Please turn in your copy of the scriptures to 1 Corinthians 9. We are gonna be today in verses 19 through 27. I know last week we looked in a sense at the whole chapter. We skirted around these last verses where Paul gives the image of the servant and the athlete.
Last week, Paul was continuing his discussion about, though we may be free in Jesus and can exercise our Christian liberties, Maybe one week it was the okay to eat meat offered to idols because idols are false gods and there’s no real reality behind them. But a weaker brother may say, no, it’s an idol and it would defile me if I were to eat. So Paul was saying to the stronger Christians, the Christians of stronger conscience, it’s good for you to spare the weaker brother. And then last week we looked at how Paul said, I even do that as an apostle, I’m free. to take a paycheck for the gospel ministry.
But as it was, he was tent making with Priscilla and Aquila. And the reason he did not want to take a paycheck from the Corinthian church is their patrons or their wealthy supporters would have held it over him. And then also he would not have had a clear conscience. He wanted to preach the gospel for free and not take up his apostolic right.
Today, we want to see his devotion, his devotion to the gospel, He gives the picture of himself as a servant and an athlete. And the hope is that we’ll see his desire to see people saved. And that will perhaps inspire by the word and spirit today, a desire in each of us where we are in life to be zealous for the gospel coming to others. So let’s hear God’s word together. This is 1 Corinthians 9. beginning at verse 19.
Paul says, for though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all that I might win more of them. To the Jews, I became a Jew in order to win Jews. To those under the law, I became as one under the law that I might win those under the law. though not being under the law myself. To those outside the law, I became as one outside the law that I might win those outside the law, not being outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ. To the weak, I became weak that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel that I may share with them and its blessings.
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to win a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable wreath. So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air, but I do discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. Amen. This is God’s great and gracious word.
I don’t know how much y’all look at people’s resumes, but if you read today’s resume from today’s little snippet of a workforce, you will generally read something like this. I am passionate about scooping yogurt, or teaching school, or whatever. The word passionate is always in there. I am passionate about blah, blah, blah. You log into your LinkedIn account and you see people’s resumes. Everybody’s passionate about something. And if they’re really into it, they are deeply Passionate have y’all seen that language.
It’s highly annoying But it is apparently the language of today you’re passionate about something or you’re deeply passionate about something and perhaps if they’re deeply passionate that’s who you should hire because You don’t want someone that will sit and look at their phone all day But that that word is getting to be overused like awesome, right?
You should really only use awesome about once or twice a year, but everything since the 80s has been awesome Perhaps in Christian language over the years, we have used phrases that maybe got a little worn out, but something like, I am sold out for Jesus. I am sold out for the gospel. Maybe you watch a little football and I think it was a couple of years ago, you know, how these football teams or the basketball teams, they’ll get their Nike shirt and they’ll put their their school slogan on it. And for, I think it was the Clemson football team, their slogan was all in. These are good slogans. It’s good to be passionate about something. It’s probably good to be deeply passionate about it. As long as it means something, it’s good to be all in. It’s good to be sold out.
What does Paul say here? He says, for the sake of the gospel, I exercise self-control. For the sake of the gospel, I discipline my body. For the sake of the gospel, I do without. For the sake of the gospel, I pull double duty and work all-nighters. For the sake of the gospel, you might say a freight train couldn’t stop me. Are we zealous for the gospel? Are we zealous for evangelism? Is, like Paul said in last week’s section of this passage, is necessity laid upon us so much so that we can’t do anything but go and tell the good news of the gospel?
Five or six times in this passage, Paul will use the little phrase, win. He wants to win people to the gospel of Jesus. One time, he’ll use the word save. He wants to preach the message of salvation that saves people. And then finally, he mentions he wants to share in the future, in the heavenly future, the blessings of Jesus with other people.
You know, from time to time, we sort of throw out our critique of modern day evangelism. Modern day evangelism is usually about address change. You know, you’re going to move and so you go to the post office and you fill out the change of address form.
I don’t want to live in hell, so I’m moving to heaven, right? Isn’t that sort of the gospel presentation of the last, I don’t know, several decades in American evangelicalism? Christianity is far more than an address change. I suppose if you’re Catholic, you gotta throw a little in-between in purgatory, right? Something like that. But isn’t Christianity way more than an address change?
It’s a total life change. God makes us new. We were dead and now we live. We’re lost and now we’re found. We were worshiping idols, and now we have turned to worship the living and true God. And so I think the more our salvation means to us, the more perhaps we understand the nuts and bolts of it in our brains and it seeped into our hearts, perhaps the more zealous we will be.
I can’t imagine the apostle Paul was roaming through the streets of Corinth and throwing out the the simple bits of peddling that we have witnessed in our generations. I’m sure he was pressing them with righteousness, pressing them with obedience, pressing them with faith in Jesus Christ. And it was something real and deep and thick. And the Holy Spirit did a great work. So are we zealous to see people one for Christ, saved from the wrath of God and share together in the future with heavenly blessings. That is the question for us today.
And Paul is going to give two images, the image of the servant and the image of the athlete. And maybe we can steal the phrase back and say this apostle Paul is, can we say it, deeply passionate to see souls won, lives saved, and eternity in heaven. and not everlasting punishment in outer darkness. Let’s think for a moment about the servant. Paul says at the beginning of the passage, verse 19, for though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all.
Now I imagine that some in his audience are slaves. Some in his audience are servants. Some in his audience understand what it means to be free. and what it means to be in servitude to others. Perhaps within the church at Corinth, there were wealthy people who owned slaves. And then there were those who were not wealthy, but they were indentured servants in the Roman way of ancient slavery.
And Paul says, I am free from all. Jesus has freed me from sin and death and darkness and Satan’s tyranny. Yet, for your sakes, I’ve re-enslaved myself in order that I might win some to the gospel. And so this image of slavery for the Apostle Paul is huge and ought to be so in our minds and hearts. Yes, we have been freed in Jesus from all sorts of things, the wrath of God, the penalty of sin, the power of sin, the practice of sin.
And we are free to go live life in this world without, remember a couple of weeks ago, being worried about food offered to idols or perhaps in the South about dancing, playing cards, and getting caught at the liquor store, that kind of thing. But Paul has said, in order that some people might be saved, I’m going to give up my freedoms.
I’m going to reenlist in the slave world and in the servant world. Where does he get this from? Is this something Paul decided one day? I’m just going to do this. It’s the right thing to do. I’m an altruistic guy. I’m a, you know, it’s just who I am. That’s not who Paul was. Remember, Paul was zealous for the Jewish faith. Paul was zealous that the Christian way be snuffed out.
And remember, he was on the way to Damascus with letters giving him authority to jail, imprison, and even murder, put to death Christians who were at Damascus. But he met Jesus on that road. And what did Jesus say to him on the road to Damascus? Why are you persecuting me? You persecute the people, you persecute Jesus. And one of the things Jesus says to him, I will show you Paul or Saul, I will show you how much you must suffer for my name. And you will be the one who takes the gospel to the Gentiles.
And so where does he get this idea of servanthood from? He gets it straight from Jesus. Jesus were told in several places in Paul’s writings, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but he emptied himself. He took on the form of a servant.
He who is rich beyond splendor in heaven for our sakes became poor in order that we might become rich. And so Paul gets his example from Jesus. And now Paul is giving his example to the Corinthian church. And there’s something about a couple degrees of imitation here. We should all imitate Jesus, but we should also imitate the righteous ones around us who imitate Jesus and our servants.
And so Paul is free. Yes. Paul could eat the meat offered to idols. He would not have a conscience problem. Paul could take an apostolic salary from the church in good conscience. He’s a hard worker. What is it? Don’t muzzle the ox while he treads out the grain. He could in good conscience do that.
But somewhere in his mind, he had seen and in his wisdom said, you know, it won’t do any good to these people if I exercise these rights. And so I’ll forego these rights so that I might win more of them. I’ll exercise, non-exercise my rights in order that many more might be saved. And so for all that Christ has purchased, I’ll do what it takes. I’ll be who I need to be in order that this will come about. Now, we got to stop here for a moment and think about mistakes that we could make.
We know that in many of our lifetimes, the church has asked the question, what can we do to make non-Christians like church and come? That was the question of the 70s and 80s, wasn’t it? Why aren’t people coming to church? And the simple answer is they don’t love Jesus. That’s easy, right?
But they didn’t go there. Why aren’t people going to church? Well, that’s because they’re pagans. They don’t want to worship God. They want to worship idols. Well, instead, some churches throughout the 70s and 80s said this, we’ll find out why non-Christians are church averse. Remember, they’re pagans. They don’t love Jesus. That’s why they’re church averse. But we’ll come up with psychological reasons. You know, we’ll come up with ways to tempt them into church.
It was the old bait and switch. James Montgomery Boyce in Philadelphia was famous for saying, what you win them with is what you win them to. And so you get ponies and cotton candy machines and skits and whatever. You win them with that. They’re never going to switch to the other.
People say, well, we’ll get them in the door and let Jesus do the rest. Well, you should do what Jesus commanded the church to do, which was to go into all the world and do skits. No, it’s to preach the gospel. And then what do you do when you preach the gospel and they get saved? You baptize, you unfold them into the church.
And so we want to be careful not to be all things to all people by any means, as in unlawful means. We want to have our Christian duties as the church all worked out. We want to be wise about how we apply it. We don’t ever want to undo something godly and biblical by doing it poorly or wrongly. But we also, in the spirit of the Apostle Paul, we want to be careful to be all things to all people.
And he gives two examples, well, three examples. The easy one is to the weak. I became weak. If there are weak brothers and sisters in the church who cannot, in their mind and heart, eat food offered to idols, then Paul says, I won’t eat food offered to idols. That’s an easy one. That’s a slam dunk.
Maybe in our case, because we’re in the South, It may be our preference to have wine at communion, but instead we use our, what is it, Ward Farms scuppernong juice from up there on Alamance Church Road. It’s alcohol free, and some people can get pretty, I don’t know, worn out.
It has to be alcohol, Jesus said so. That’s not a battle worth fighting, but that’s a hill some will die on, I do believe, or maybe, You know, we’re careful how we introduce ourselves to people, how we dress around folks with different convictions. Perhaps we, for the sake of the gospel, we do this or that in our behavior. There are occasions where wisdom should prevail, and we should not exercise our freedoms in order to win some. Well, the weak, that’s one example.
What about the Gentile? They are those who are not under the law of Moses. Now, this could get really confusing really quickly, so I’m going to see if I can give you the CliffsNotes version. If you’re a Jewish person and you have not yet put your faith in Messiah, who fulfilled the law of righteousness, and lived and obeyed and died in your place, then what in Paul’s mind must he remember about them? They believe they must live according to the law to achieve righteousness. But what about the Gentile who was never under the law of Moses? He is under the law, Paul says, I’ll be under the law of Jesus.
And so to the Gentile, he doesn’t do all the Jewish ceremonial stuff. He doesn’t have to worry about Nazarite vows. He doesn’t have to worry about, you know, some of maybe the stricter Sabbath issues. He is able to be a Gentile to the Gentiles, to those not under the law of Moses. And so he doesn’t bring in all the rigmarole of the Mosaic covenant and weigh them down with it. There’s just no need. They don’t understand it. They were never under it. They didn’t go to Jewish Sunday school class. So to the weak, he’s able to be weak. To those outside the law, he’s able to be outside the law. But what about to the Jew? He says, to the Jew, I became as a Jew.
There are places in the Acts of the Apostles where, for example, Paul takes Timothy into a Jewish community to preach Jesus Christ and Timothy, He circumcises. But then you have the big holoblue, and what is it, Acts chapter 15, and then it goes into the Galatian church. Do Gentile converts have to be circumcised? And the answer is no. And Timothy said, well, what gives, right? You made me do it. But it was in order that Timothy would not be offensive. within that Jewish community. And so there are times and places where Paul, for the sake of winning Jews, would become as a Jew and place him under the law.
I think somewhere, maybe after the third missionary journey, Paul leaves Ephesus and he goes back to Jerusalem and we read that he gets his head shaved. Why does he get his head shaved? He’s a Christian. Why does he get his head shaved? He’s not under the Mosaic law.
He willingly undertook a Nazarite vow. And he refrained from all the things you refrained from to fulfill that Nazarite vow. He got his head shaved. He took the voyage to Jerusalem and he took the offering that was necessary for that right and vow to be fulfilled in the Jewish temple. And of course, that’s when he ends up back at Jerusalem and gets the crowd riled up and gets thrown in prison and he, you know, off you go on the chain gang. But why did he take the Nazarite vow? Did he have to? something he willingly did.
And so how do we put this into practice in our lives? Jesus, a servant, willing to do what is necessary to come seek and save the lost. Paul, a servant, a slave, willing to do what it takes within lawful boundaries to seek and save the lost. What about us? Are we deeply passionate about the gospel of Jesus and people being saved that we might for the sake of not offending a brother or sister or a future brother and sister, we might be gracious.
We might tune up our lives in a way to be less offensive and perhaps be received reasonably. That’s a question for us. Well, the other picture, well, let me mention one other concern and then the other picture. This question comes up in missions all the time. We ask the question of contextualization. For example, we’re going to, okay, let’s go to the continent of Africa and be missionaries. Do we take our American Presbyterian fancy sanctuary and our suits and our organ over to the continent of Africa? No, we don’t. We don’t do that.
But do we take reading the word, preaching the word, praying the word, singing the word? Seeing the word in communion and baptism and touching and tasting the word in the Lord’s Supper. Of course we do it may get Contextualized a little differently the principles are there but in their in their community it may look a tad different and God has left us with wisdom for The day in the not the day, but the hour of worship and the circumstances surrounding it. We must do certain things and We must say certain things. We must be gospel clear and faithful to the scripture and great commission. But wisdom says in this part of the world, in this context, you may do things a tad differently.
Just think about our own day. Why do we worship at 11? It’s because the farmers had to milk the cows before they came into church. And that’s just stuck in American culture. And, you know, heaven forbid we change it from 11, but heaven forbid we go past 12 too, right?
So these things are part of what we call contextualization. Well, that’s one picture Paul gives the servant. Are we willing to give up our rights to serve other people? Hope the answer is yes, and hope the spirit would work in each of us where we may need to give up certain rights in order to lawfully present the gospel to others. But what about the picture of the athlete? Now Paul is at Corinth on the Isthmus, see if I get this right, the Isthmus. And on the Isthmus, guess what they had?
They had the Isthmian games. Sort of a Olympic type thing. Every two years on this slender piece of land, maybe it was a mile or two across from the two seas on either side of the Isthmus of Corinth, they had what were called the Isthmian games. Like the Olympics, they had chariot races, they had foot races, they had boxing matches.
They had World Cup soccer. They had American football. Now, they didn’t have those things, but they had all these games. And so the athletic image was probably very prominent in their minds. I think in our current year or so, we’re about to see the Olympics, the World Cup, and maybe some other monumental athletic events.
And so if we’re sports-minded people, perhaps like the Corinthians were, I mean, this was talking about the Steelers in Pittsburgh, right? This was talking about the Eagles in Philly. We don’t talk about our team in North Carolina. But you know how maybe in Green Bay, the cheesehead thing, the Packers, is a big deal. It was built into the society. And so he’s going to speak here of athletes.
The other thing Paul, I’m sure, has in mind is he’s spoken of not taking his right as a paid apostle is he’s been tent making. Guess what happens when all these people come to Corinth to play games, they need places to stay and they don’t have Motel 6. They stay in tents made by human hands like tent maker Paul. And so probably as he writes this from Ephesus, he remembers back to the year old 51 AD where his fingers hurt extra from making more tents to meet the demand of all those who would come and stay for the Isthmian games.
Well, he gives the picture of the athlete and he says an athlete competes for a prize. And while Earthly athletes compete for a wreath, you know, a little bit of greenery that goes around the neck that will fade. The church worker, the gospel worker, the apostle, you, the evangelist, you compete for an everlasting prize. It’s an eternal prize. He calls Christians in other places in his letters, trophies of grace. Do what it takes to win people to the gospel. Do what it takes within the laws of the scripture to save people and to see them come to Jesus. And they will be an everlasting trophy of grace in heaven.
And so the picture here is the athlete who spends time. They give of their body and they limit their food. They perhaps channel their energies. And they train in such a way that their bodies perform to win a race. And as they race and as they box and as they swing their fist and all the rest, there is agony. There is certainly a mental aspect. And he says, we have self-control. We train, we do without, because our aim is to compete and our aim is to win.
And so you put together the servant aspect of Paul and the highly trained and focused athlete that Paul gives. And you put that together and you say, what kind of gospel apostle was he? What kind of evangelist should we be? What kind of elders should we be? What kind of ministers should we be? What kind of telling Jesus to others people should we be? Should we work at knowing the gospel? Should we think about it so that the joy of our own salvation wells up in our heart? Should we seek opportunities? Should we perhaps make a prayer list? and pray for the opportunity. These are ways you can take the servant and athlete picture that Paul gives and put it into practice in your lives.
People say little, you know, we have these goofy evangelism phrases in the American church. And one of them that’s really goofy, but we’re going to steal it back is we want to be intentional. about our evangelism. We want to discipline our prayer life, order our prayer list. We want to know and understand and believe and feel the gospel so that we can tell it to others.
So a couple of questions as we think of what Paul says. You may be free and you may have in your mind and in your heart all your freedoms in Jesus, but are you willing to put them aside to be a servant? Willing to put them aside to be a servant of God, servant of Christ for others? You may not be an athlete. Maybe you’re past your prime, you may think. You’re in that stage of, I used to could, right? Used to be able to. But do you work at knowing and telling the good news of Jesus? These are wonderful things to think about. And here’s a final question.
Is your hope That there will be more people, especially your loved ones and your close friends and relations or people God has put in your life. Is it your hope that they will be in heaven to share the blessings of Jesus forever with you? This was so for the Apostle Paul, may it be so for us.
Let’s do pray. Lord, we come to you now asking for help and blessing as we want to live the Christian life faithfully. We want to know the word and live the word. hate and forsake sin and worldliness, but we also want to share the good news with others. So first of all, make it good news again today in our minds and hearts. Remind us of who we were, lost, dead in our sins and trespasses. without hope in this world, but when the goodness and kindness of Jesus came, he saved us and he washed us with his blood, washed us with the Holy Spirit. And Lord, may we tell that good news to others and may it bear fruit in this world, we pray in Jesus’ great and gracious name, amen. We want to respond to God’s word and we have hymn number 576.